Dear David and all,
Thank you for your post this morning. All your posts, including your
reports from visits to Poland and elsewhere are truly appreciated, David.
However, the mail from here this morning was not written in response to any
specific experience your have reported. Rather, it was caused by something
you wrote about heroism; you had questioned whether such a notion is any
longer appropriate or relevant.
The notion of heroism is not simple, as anyone who has done any serious
study of literature knows. Do novels have heroes (or even anti-heroes)? Did
they used to have them, but at one point stopped having them? Are the terms
*protagonist* and *hero* synonymous? etc.
The view from here is that in regular parlance a hero is someone who acts
selflessly, such that when someone acts kindly we may refer to that person
as a hero (of a story). The question, as you noticed very astutely, David,
is whether the defenders of the Polish Post were heroes (or merely stupid,
as you implied).
Do you believe, David, that the kind of sacrifice that these persons gave
for their nation can be evaluated with reference to simple calculation,
such as one might do if one were to claim that they would be heroes if and
only if their side's chances of winning the war would be increased by such
and such a ratio as a result of their act?
Looking forward to enlightenment on this issue.
Mvh. / Yours sincerely,
Torgeir Fjeld
https://torgeirfjeld.com/
*rock philosophy: meditations on art and desire *is now in paperback with
30% discount: order before June 8, 2019, with coupon code VEPNFTCEA30 from
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On Mon, 22 Jul 2019 at 16:13, <profdritchie@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
I see I should have named the fight everyone goes to visit, the one that
is the subject of movies. This was a fight between uniformed forces. I did
not know about the defense of the post office which, given that the "free
city" had voted fifty five percent for the NSDAP In the final election
before the war seems an unwise use of force.
On Westerplatte Polish forces were defending Polish territory and a Polish
munitions depot. They had no air cover and were subject to bombardment by
the Schleswig Holstein, which had announced its arrival as a "friendly
visit," as well as attacks by the Luftwaffe.
But what in warfare is wise and what is not, after a lifetime of study I
think carefully about before offering any opinion. To state the obvious, I
was not in their shoes.
David Ritchie,
Kraków.------------------------------------------------------------------
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